1. Technical Field
The present invention relates in general to multilingual support for data processing system software and in particular to different human language translations of user interface text in multilingual software. Still more particularly, the present invention relates to delivering and installing a human language translation for user interface text within a software program separately from remaining functional components for that software program.
2. Description of the Related Art
Software products are frequently implemented for international distribution. In releasing and shipping software products worldwide, however, multiple human language versions of the software product are frequently required for distribution within different countries of regions. A considerable lag in delivery time is introduced by the fact that the human language translations of menus, dialog messages, control text, etc. is often not prepared until after the full functionality of the product is implemented.
Such human language translations of the software user interface text are typically the last step to be performed and results in the delay of product manufacture. Currently, translations introduced after the product has been shipped are typically delivered as a patch rather than a component of the product. Furthermore, all desired languages must either be selected during installation of the software product on a particular system and then updated or added by reinstallation, or all languages must be loaded onto a system, taking up storage space even if never needed. The conventional mechanism for distributing human language translations of a software product also does not lend itself to changes to the language files after delivery for fixes, corrections, or updates.
It would be desirable, therefore, to provide a mechanism for dynamic delivery of human language translations for a software product separate from distribution of the remaining functional components for the software product.